Jareth stared at Sarah, who sat on the stone floor in a semi-fetal position with her face pressed against her bare knees. She did not speak to him, and though he had tried to get her to look at him, she would not quite meet his gaze.

Raspiel and Jonas had left them alone for a few minutes—the king probably thought that it would weaken Jareth's resolve to see his lady so . . . fragile and broken.

And indeed, it very likely would have—he hated to admit it even to himself, but he had been tempted to give in. He was in excruciating pain from the wounds all over his body, especially the lash cuts across his back which he knew were still open and bleeding. And he held little hope that even if Sarah should read his note, and understand exactly what he had been trying to alert her to with his blatantly false words, that she would be able to do anything about it. If he only had himself to be concerned about, he might have already given in to Raspiel's demands and relinquished his magic to the Unseelie king. There was cold iron everywhere in the Unseelie dungeon and it made his pulse quicken in animalistic terror. He hated to think that he could be so weak, but he felt drained. Stripped of his powers, temporarily or not, he felt like a wraith.

The only reason that Jareth had not already given Raspiel what he wanted was that his magic was the only thing keeping Sarah alive. Without it, they would both die; for he harbored no illusions at all that Raspiel would allow him to live once he had what he wanted.

"Sarah?" Jareth whispered.

She stirred and lifted her head just enough to look at him over the tops of her knees. "What?"

"Sarah, where's the wand?" he asked.

She stared at him in a confused way with her forehead knitted together thoughtfully. "They . . . they took it," she said finally.

"Is that so," he said. Jareth narrowed his eyes and studied her closely. Her own eyes were almost black, they were so dark. That wasn't right. His Sarah's eyes turned that color, but only in anger or the heat of passion. Fear made them go green. "Sarah?"

"Yes, love?"

Love? His suspicions deepened at that. His Sarah had never in all the time he had known her called him by a pet name. She had called him 'Goblin King' a few times, but only when she was mocking him.

"Are you alright?" he asked her.

Her dark eyes brimmed with tears. "Oh Jareth, I'm so afraid!"

She may have been afraid, but moment by moment, he was beginning to suspect that this woman was not his Sarah. His Sarah did not get meek and whiny in her fear, to the best of his knowledge—and he was in a position to know, having used a hundred tricks and spells aimed to reduce her to just such a state on more than one occasion—His Sarah would have been plotting to find a way out of their situation, the whole time throwing vindictive and extremely colorful insults at the dungeon door that Raspiel and Jonas had disappeared through minutes before. His Sarah would have been cursing like an angry harlot, and she would not have called him 'love' in that simpering sweet way.

He wondered if this Sarah, this glamour Sarah, had an owl tattoo just below and between her breasts. It would be a simple way of confirming his suspicions one way or the other, but she kept her knees tucked up, and he could not remember noticing it when Jonas first brought her in. That was understandable, he supposed, but it certainly would have simplified things a great deal if he could remember. But then, that didn't really confirm anything either, when he thought about it. Raspiel could have glimpsed it that night he surprised them in the mirror. Sarah had been naked, and though only for an instant before she hurried into her robe, it was possible that the Fae had seen the mark.

"Sarah?" he said again, getting an idea.

"Yes, my love?"

Again with the 'my loves', he thought. "Say something Yeats for me, my dear," he said.

She tilted her head to one side and again looked confused. "What's a Yeats?" she asked.

Jareth's eyes flared with triumph and he almost laughed. "Exactly."